PRESERVATION OF WORKING CONDITION. 33 



Many people work a horse on Sunday, as if they thought six 

 days of idleness should enable him to perform a week's work 

 m one day. When the horse has much to do on Sunday, he 

 should in general do nearly as much on Wednesday, and on 

 other days he may have walking exercise. 



Excess of Work. — A single day of severe exertion may 

 destroy the horse's working condition. His lungs may be 

 injured, a disease may succeed, and require many days to 

 cure it. Between the disease, the cure, and the idleness, the 

 condition may be wholly gone before anything can be done to 

 keep or to restore it. This is termed over-marking, and it is 

 not the excess I here mean. 



That to which I allude is not the excess of one day. The 

 horse may perform the work for several days, or even weeks, 

 quite well, yet it may be too much to be done long. One of 

 two things will happen, or both may occur together. The 

 horse will lose flesh, and become weak, or his legs will fail, 

 and he will become lame. 



Emaciation, the loss of flesh from excess of work, is easily 

 explained. The work is such as to consume more nutriment 

 than the digestive apparatus can supply. The horse may 

 have as much of the best food as he will eat, yet the power 

 of the stomach and bowels is limited. They can furnish only 

 a certain quantity of nutriment. When the work demands 

 more, it is procured from other parts of the body. The fat, 

 if there be any, is consumed first ; it is converted into blood ; 

 a little is taken away every day ; by-and-by it is all removed, 

 and the horse is lean. Should the demand still continue, 

 other parts are absorbed ; the cellular tissue, and ultimately 

 every particle of matter, which the system can spare, is con- 

 verted into nutriment. When the whole is consumed, the 

 supply must be wholly furnished by the digestive apparatus, 

 and if that were unable to meet the demand at first, it is still 

 less able now. By this time the horse is very lean, his 

 bones stare through the skin ; he is spiritless, stiff", and slow, 

 and his belly is tucked up almost to the backbone. The 

 horse becomes unfit for work. Rest and good food soon re- 

 store him, but if work be still exacted, the solids and fluids 

 change, the system falls into decay, and a disease, such as a 

 common cold, or the influenza, from which a horse in ordi- 

 nary condition would soon recover, produces in this worn- 

 out animal glanders or farcy. Work is sometimes exacted 

 till the horse is ruined, but the owner rarely escapes, for 

 when glanders once appears it seldom stays where it begins. 



